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Life
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Recent Advances in Extremophiles: From Life at Edge on Earth...
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Recent Advances in Extremophiles: From Life at Edge on Earth to Space Exploration: 2nd Edition

A special issue of Life (ISSN 2075-1729). This special issue belongs to the section "Astrobiology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 November 2023) | Viewed by 2258

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Daniela Billi

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Biology, University of Rome Tor Vergata, 00133 Roma, Italy
Interests: astrobiology; extreme environments; cyanobacteria; molecular biology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, extremophiles have gained great attention as industrial biotechnology platforms for producing a wide variety of bio-products, ranging from biofuels to high-value bioactive and recombinant proteins. In addition, they hold promise as robust chassis to synthesize desired products through synthetic genetic circuits. More recently, they have gained attention for the limit of life as we know it and the search for habitable worlds beyond Earth, including planets orbiting other stars, as well as for the identification of suitable biomarkers to search for life. New insights have been provided by experiments that exposed extremophiles to open space and to laboratory simulations that mimic Mars, icy moons and exoplanetary conditions. This Special Issue invites original research papers and reviews that cover the latest research challenges in extremophiles from biotechnological and synthetic biology applications on Earth and in space to astrobiology.

Prof. Dr. Daniela Billi
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Life is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • extremophiles
  • extreme environments
  • planetary analogs
  • biotechnology
  • synthetic biology
  • astrobiology
  • space exploration
  • life support

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

16 pages, 1711 KiB  
Article
Growth and Photosynthetic Efficiency of Microalgae and Plants with Different Levels of Complexity Exposed to a Simulated M-Dwarf Starlight
by Mariano Battistuzzi, Lorenzo Cocola, Elisabetta Liistro, Riccardo Claudi, Luca Poletto and Nicoletta La Rocca
Life 2023, 13(8), 1641; https://doi.org/10.3390/life13081641 - 28 Jul 2023
Viewed by 1576
Abstract
Oxygenic photosynthetic organisms (OPOs) are primary producers on Earth and generate surface and atmospheric biosignatures, making them ideal targets to search for life from remote on Earth-like exoplanets orbiting stars different from the Sun, such as M-dwarfs. These stars emit very low light [...] Read more.
Oxygenic photosynthetic organisms (OPOs) are primary producers on Earth and generate surface and atmospheric biosignatures, making them ideal targets to search for life from remote on Earth-like exoplanets orbiting stars different from the Sun, such as M-dwarfs. These stars emit very low light in the visible and most light in the far-red, an issue for OPOs, which mostly utilize visible light to photosynthesize and grow. After successfully testing procaryotic OPOs (cyanobacteria) under a simulated M-dwarf star spectrum (M7, 365–850 nm) generated through a custom-made lamp, we tested several eukaryotic OPOs: microalgae (Dixoniella giordanoi, Microchloropsis gaditana, Chromera velia, Chlorella vulgaris), a non-vascular plant (Physcomitrium patens), and a vascular plant (Arabidopsis thaliana). We assessed their growth and photosynthetic efficiency under three light conditions: M7, solar (SOL) simulated spectra, and far-red light (FR). Microalgae grew similarly in SOL and M7, while the moss P. patens showed slower growth in M7 with respect to SOL. A. thaliana grew similarly in SOL and M7, showing traits typical of shade-avoidance syndrome. Overall, the synergistic effect of visible and far-red light, also known as the Emerson enhancing effect, could explain the growth in M7 for all organisms. These results lead to reconsidering the possibility and capability of the growth of OPOs and are promising for finding biosignatures on exoplanets orbiting the habitable zone of distant stars. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Extremophiles: From Life at Edge on Earth to Space Exploration: 2nd Edition)
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